Injury Prevention in Josephville, MO. Whether you play a sport and are trying to get a shot at the next level, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our licensed Josephville, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Josephville, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors like playing sports, kayaking, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps stave off significant health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Josephville, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Josephville, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Josephville, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

1. Chronic injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as tennis or lacrosse players, with joint pain usually being the first indicator.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Josephville, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally occur because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot hold up under the force, torque, or stretching that are required or are possible in a given activity. There are three chief causes of why your body cannot handle an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can cause dependency on one set of muscles, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It also causes posture dysfunction, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Poor coordination

Tailored injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Josephville, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

• Joint mobility restrictions
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Decreased balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Josephville, MO, we’ll go through your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in concert with with your doctor or any additional providers treating you, we’ll devise a personalized treatment plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when resting, sitting, or in certain stances necessary for their sport. Healthy posture means proper positioning of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the joints in the spine, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it harder to achieve the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle imbalance
• Poor positioning
• Joint mobility restrictions
• Poor muscle recruitment

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, range of motion, and that your vertebrae remain in place.

Injury Prevention Techniques in Josephville, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. No one safety tip is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are things you can do to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you’re moderately active, take it easy after activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use the appropriate equipment — Helmets, shin guards, protective eyewear, and other required equipment in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like lacerations or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Josephville, MO doctor or injury prevention expert may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
• Improve muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors necessary for in sports and other activities. Our Josephville, MO injury prevention experts will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
• Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three important things for injury prevention:
  1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to handle more drastic movements.
  2. It enhances blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
  3. It improves your posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that necessitate dynamic movements require muscles and tendons compliant enough to store and release the high amount of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• Use proper technique — In every physical activity, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you get be the best athlete you can be but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of a head injury, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and educate you on how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
• Listen to your body — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that means that body part is telling your brain that something isn’t right. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While playing through pain is often seen as commendable among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure your body heals naturally and can withstand a return to physical activity.
• Play by the rules — Many sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are examples of rules put in place to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to have a medical evaluation before a new season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Josephville, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Josephville, MO

Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room visits and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain like arthritis that accumulate over time can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints healthy. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and ideal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Josephville, MO include:

• Shoulder Pain
• Mobility
• Knee Injury
• Joint Pain
• Sciatica
• Dry Needling
• ACL Tear
• Pain Management
• Rotator Cuff Tear

Josephville, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The knowledgeable Josephville, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body prepared for the rigors of physical activity, and your mind confident that you can safely return to the activities you love. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Schedule an appointment online or call the location nearest you to learn more about what our Josephville, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.